Advances in digital video coding have enabled the adoption of video into personal communication such as video telephony over mobile communication networks, capture and sharing of personal digital videos and consumption of video content available in internet services. At the same time, perhaps the most significant breakthrough since the addition of color into moving pictures is happening: moving pictures can be viewed in three dimensions, and from different viewing angles. Again, digital video coding is enabling the adoption of this technology into personal, widespread use.
The Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC) standard is widely used through digital video application domains. A multi-view extension, known as Multi-view Video Coding (MVC), has been standardized as an annex to H.264/AVC. The base view of MVC bitstreams can be decoded by any H.264/AVC decoder, which facilitates introduction of stereoscopic and multi-view content into existing services. MVC allows inter-view prediction, which can result in bitrate savings compared to independent coding of all views, depending on how correlated the adjacent views are.
As multi-view video coding is becoming more popular and its applications are increasing, there is a need for solutions that further improve the efficiency and quality of multi-view video coding.